Elder Christensen: Letter 6/24/13 "Heat of the Moment"

This weeks Transfer meeting was the hardest one yet. It was president Clark's last one and we lost tons of great elders and sisters.  Sister To'ala was my mission sister and she sang a way good hawaiian song she wrote about our mission and it was a tear jerker for sure! 

 

Well another good week in Moberly. We got to teach Terry and Julie Gross the Restoration and it was our best lesson yet in this area. They seem really interested.  They read the Book of Mormon together and they have read 1st and 2nd nephi in one week so they are doing awesome!!  We put a ceiling up for them in their home this week. That house has a lot of work to be done but I love helping them and they love us. We also had to fix a window on our truck this week it was a shorted wire, but Terry was like I'd love to spend 3 hours with you at the Chevy dealership, so we talked the whole time and really got to know one another.  They didn't make it to church this Sunday not sure why, they seemed really sincere.  We will be seeing them again this week so we will see what the deal is?

We did tons of service this week. Tuff work too. We did 2 big loads of mulch by hand and then we did cement fencing for another family. It was a good day.  My companion is from the city and has never done work like this so that was a great joy for me to see him do some real work ha ha!  Then after our long day of service I thought it would be a good day to do MY GREENY PRANK. The other elders helped me out on this one. It was epic! So our neighbor has tons of snakes and Elder Rausch hates snakes so we asked him for a dead one.  Then when Elder Rausch was in the shower the other Elders and I planted the dead snake in his bed and he got in after our prayer and put his hand up his pillow and right on the snake. hahahaha! He flipped out and threw the snake he thought it was alive ! Then he took apart every piece of his bed and checked for snakes. lol He does this a lot now!:)

Well I don't think the church can make missions any easier than they are. Now you can go right out of high school, and still waste your time on facebook, twitter, or what ever you want!  I'm going to tell my kids I had 1 year of a real mission then 1 year of a lazy geeky mission. Tracting puts hair on your chest, and sitting at a computer just makes you fatter this will lead to many new fat Missionaries and you can quote me !! I have failed to find any scripture in the bible or the book of Mormon where the prophets texted or emailed the gospel, and called it missionary work, but I don't make these decisions.  I really hope this tool does more good than evil but only time will tell :) I love you all and hope to hear from you soon !

Love Elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/17/13 "I cannot come down"

Well this week we finally found some solid investigators. They just moved into Moberly and let us right in and we talked for a good hour on our conversion. They came to volleyball and met some members that same night.  They love motorcycles and they are in the C.M.A. Christian Motorcycle Association. They are in their 50's and have known tons of Mormons and love them, so they said they would hear us out and come to some services so that's great!  We knocked on at least 500 empty doors this week to find them but it was totally worth it, and knocking on all those doors just means your wife will be prettier ha ha !

 

Our other investigators are feeding us this Saturday and we are teaching them this Tuesday as well so hopefully we will get them to volleyball and church this week! They come from Arkansas and are in very humble living circumstances but we are helping them the best we can to improve with what they got. This week we rebuilt the brick stairs off the back of their home and moved a lot of dirt to do so. I love that hard work! I miss it !! Brings back so many memories of working with my family. :) 

We got transfer calls this week as well and I got some very unexpected news. Moberly area 2 is now the District Leader area and I'm the new Ditrict Leader so that's going to be fun. Ha! Ha! this will be the longest transfer in the mission as well. It will be 8 weeks because we get president Morgan (new mission president) this Wednesday.  I will miss president Clark very much but hope to keep his work ethic and motivation in this mission!

We did tons of service this week but one of my favorite was after eating 17 tacos at the Donald's home, they let me milk their cow! Ha Ha! That was pretty cool. I'm never wasting milk! It's hard work for every drop!! They might have a friend for us to start teaching soon which would be great. This area is very tuff to find, teach, and baptize, but we are doing the best we can and won't give up ! As Nehimiah said in the bible "I'm doing a great work and can not come down," so is our work. We just need to keep going and get past this hard summer :)

 

Love you all and hope to hear from you soon !

Love elder Christensen

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/10/13 I'm hot blooded 103

Well this week was a lot harder for finding people, but we got through it, and did all we could. We tracted a lot this week when we had time from all our busy service!! I was super excited. I was gonna be a head coach for summer tee-ball, and it was all set up then the ZL's (zone leaders) said we couldn't do it... I was way mad! Ha! Ha! If I wasn't working on my patience some missionaries might have got a tee-ball hitting lesson for free :) I felt bad telling the manager at the YMCA that we had to back out. He wasn't very happy about it either. :/

 

We did our district leader exchanges this week, and I got to workout at the YMCA with Elder Gibbs. That was amazing, other than I was still recovering from a fever (of 103) I got earlier in the week.  Elder Gibbs is a great leader and he is way into motorcycles so we talked about bike for many many hours on this exchange.  He talked me into a Ducati so I'm set in my ways now. Ha! Ha! :) We also got to visit some part-member families in Macon and they had a lot of country in them! Ha! Ha! It was super fun!  I'm very glad I wasnt stuck with Elder Esplin. My poor companion endured that trial well! Ha! Ha!

 

So I found tons of nasty mold in our apartment so I went crazy on cleaning that place top to bottom! I bought huge contractor bags and wrapped my twin bed and all the couch cushions and slept on the floor for one night. Glad I don't have to do that too often. I'm pretty sure we have the cleanest apartment in the mission now :)

 

This week Danny was dropped (as an investigator) because he went crazy on our ward mission leader and I thought they were going to duke it out! Ha! Ha! So we had to leave. The Spirit was gone long before that, but you learn from it none the less ... John Ekstrom is our most solid investigator. He is RLDS so he loves and believes everything we teach other than being married for eternity or anything that we teach that involves eternal progression.  This is new for me and its hard because I'm training as well, and Elder Rausch is doing the best he can, but this guy is far from a routine investigator and the normal lessons. Ha! Ha! It's been fun though !! We have some firesides soming up soon so hopefully that will be a good finding tool for us this week. We need some new investigators !! Love you all enjoy your summer mine starts 360 days from now but who is counting? ;) 

Love Elder christensen  

Elder Christensen: Letter 6/3/13 Slapped by the word!

Well this week was great because we didn’t die in a tornado! Four of them were in our mission. Crazy stuff! And one was 40 miles from us but I have no doubt that we will be protected! We got 2 new investigators and had awesome lessons this week with Mike and Danny and our newest investigator John. He lives in Paris which is a small town like 30 miles from Moberly and he believes everything we taught. He love the restoration, but he just thinks that the prophets to follow aren’t correct so we are working through his concern but he is well prepared and we did invite him to pray to know if president Monson is a true prophet. We will be seeing him again this Friday to see how that went J We also might be teaching Miss Moberly. She ran into us at service and was helping out and was either interested in our message or us... Ha! Ha! We will find out in 2 days, but as President Clark (PC) says “Elders, we need to flirt to convert” Ha! Ha! I love PC im gonna miss him for sure !! His mission President is finished with his mission this summer, so he will be getting a new one.

 We had a baptism this weekend. A part-member family baptism. Nicholas got baptized by his dad and confirmed by his brother. That was cool to see. We taught Nicholas the discussions mainly for practice for my greeny, but they went very well and we got technically a convert baptism. Ha! Ha! Fun stuff, but hopefully we will get some of our investigators to church this week and get them rolling J

We also had a lot of District unity this week as we went to the Pizza Hut buffet and battled to see who could eat the most. To say the least I still hold my title! Ha! Ha! I almost lost to Elder Peterson. He is a beast he weighs 285 and played college football as a center, but I still got it! Definitely had some running to do after that !!

Things are picking up out here hopefully will get some fun stories and more memories. JI also got rebuked hardcore this week in my studies as I was listen to a talk from Elder Ballard. He read D&C 49:15 and if that wasn’t the biggest slap in the face I don’t know what is ha ha so I’ll be looking a little more openly on the subject from here on out haha !!!! I love you all hope all is well!

Love Elder Christensen

FYI, I had to look this one up. D&C 49:15- "And again, verily I say unto you, that whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man." Jeff has been saying that he probably won't get married, so I guess he is reconsidering after hearing this!